


No such luck

by July_Jackson



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Almost Kiss, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Mad Sweeney Needs a Hug (American Gods)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:33:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29921082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/July_Jackson/pseuds/July_Jackson
Summary: On their way to save the kidnapped Shadow Moon, Sweeney and Laura must travel together once again. What happens when Sweeney can no longer ignore the growing feelings he has for the dead wife?The song stuck in my head while I was writing was "You want it darker" by Leonard Cohen.
Relationships: Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest here, I wrote this short chapter on a whim. Hopefully I can develop it into something bigger.

Mad Sweeney ran a hand through his thick orange hair, his cheek twitched as he took a long drag on his cigarette. He cast a side glance at the dead wife, his slowly rotting travel companion, who was leant against their car, staring out at a field of Oxeye daisies .  Travelling with her  wasn’t so  bad, if he rolled the windows down. He made those  macabre jokes, but they masked what was growing, something had come alive inside of him. It had started with a look, not a particularly meaningful look, he had said something  greatly insulting , she had glared at him. But it was different somehow, her eyes were softer, there was less malice being directed at him.  That one look stirred a heat in him that was getting harder to ignore, he was getting hot for the cold, walking corpse. 

“Pfft,” he spat, flicking his spent cigarette to the side of the road.

Laura Moon turned her head in his direction, “What’s wrong?”

“Mind your own fucking business, nosy cunt,” he winced at his own words, dragging her down so she  didn’t get a whiff of his growing feelings.

“You stink, Dead Wife,” he said, with an exaggerated wave of his hand.

“So do you, Ginger Minge,” she retorted, quick and with the hint of a smile on her pale lips.

She  wasn’t wrong, he could smell the stale alcohol and cigarettes on himself, mixed in with the strong  musky scent of sweat. Neither of them had had much time for personal grooming, Laura had only been focused on reaching her beloved Shadow, Sweeney just wanted his coin back, or so he had told himself. Retrieving the coin would be a bonus, but he  wasn’t in it for just that anymore. He was drawn to her now, for reasons unknown, a pull that he  couldn’t fight anymore. Not even her  mottled flesh and  greying eyes could disguise what he saw in her, a secret radiance that she buried deep within herself, nestled somewhere in her breast along with his lucky coin.

He started up the car as she lit a cigarette, her arm resting against the frame of the window, a breeze blowing in that  tousled her dark hair, she made no attempt to brush it out of the way.

“You made me pull over so you could stare at a field for ten minutes?  What the fuck was that about?” he asked, partly out of a genuine curiosity and partly to break the silence.

“Maybe you should be minding your own business,” she answered.

“Hey, I was just asking, no need for hostility.”

Laura let a few more minutes of silence pass by before she spoke again, “I just needed a moment, a peaceful one, no death, no Gods and no fucking Leprechauns!”

“Point taken,” he mocked saluted.

He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white, his nails digging into the foam. He felt hot, an unpleasant stickiness around his face and neck. Trying to avoid looking at her was hopeless, even when his gaze  wasn’t upon her, his mind was, an image etched into the back of his eyes.

“God damn it!” he perforated the bubble of silence, “Why do you get to sit there and  mope about how unfair everything is?”

“Excuse me?” she gave him that look, the one that was supposed to create a fear in him, but all it did was tie his gut up in knots.

“You heard me, whining away about your lot in life, or in your case, death. You’re not the only one who’s suffering you know, but you’re too  fucking concerned with yourself to see it.”

Given her tendency to violence towards him, Sweeney did brace himself for her physical retaliation, but it  didn’t come. She just reached into her pocket and retrieved two cigarettes, lit them both and passed him one, which he took with caution.

“You think I don’t care about you?” she asked him, exhaling a large cloud of smoke.

“Now, I didn’t say that I was talking about me.”

“It’s not hard to figure out that’s what you meant, you only  whine about your stupid  fucking coin . Do you think I really enjoy depriving you of  what’s yours? I have no choice, twice  I’ve found Shadow and twice  he’s been ripped from me again, I need  what’s yours until I can find him and get my life back. So, I’d appreciate it if you were a little more patient with me.”

“Okay, calm down, dead wife,” he wished  he’d let the silence continue.

“Look, just drive, okay? Shadow is getting further away.”

_ Fucking Shadow _ _ ,  _ he thought to himself.

Sweeney knew she  didn’t love him, she just thought that she did, but she had to realise that for herself, no amount of him telling her would convince her. 

“How about some music?” he reached for the radio as she did, her cold fingers grazing his. They both retracted their hands as if the radio  was aflame, he nodded and gestured for her to choose the station. Sweeney yawned and widened his  eyes; sleep had been a luxury lately.

“Shall I drive for a bit?” Laura offered.

“Aye, a nap can’t hurt.”

He pulled the car over and they switched seats, Sweeney opted to rest in the front seat instead of in the back. He closed his eyes as Laura pulled away from the side of the road, it  didn’t take long for the motion of the car to lull him to sleep. His head rolled to the side and he slid sideways until it rested on Laura’s shoulder, she left him there, mumbling incoherently in his sleep. She watched his brow  furrow and  relax , his lips twitched as nonsense words  escaped them.

One word was clear as day to her, spoken softly on exhale, “Laura.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Ouch!  Fucking hell , you mad  bitch .  Why’d you do that?” Sweeney shouted as he hit the dashboard of the car when Laura slammed on the brakes.

“You’ve been asleep for  2 hours and you’ve drooled on my shoulder,” she said with  a withering look.

“You could have just nudged me, like a normal person!”

“I did,  a bunch of times, you just kept telling me to fuck off.”

“I did? Heh,  sounds like something I’d do.”

He stopped grinning at the sight of her  scowl , “I’ll take over driving duties again then, yeah?”

“That’d be great.”

She took the backseat and spread herself out, head resting against the door. Sweeney sat himself in the driver’s seat and flicked at a fly that was crawling on the steering wheel, it hit the  windscreen , buzzed twice in the throes of  death and then ceased to move.

“Don’t they annoy you? Buzzing round you all the time,” he asked her.

“No more than you do,” she answered, cracking one cloudy eye open.

“Fuck you, dead wife,” he mumbled under his breath.

“What  was that?”

“Absolutely  nothin ,” he  answered.

“Yeah, I thought so.”

He pushed his foot harder against the accelerator, the sooner they reached Shadow, the sooner  he could be rid of her. Wednesday had him playing  chauffeur for a walking corpse , when he  should be out in the world enjoying his luck, not  following the  angry  flesh and bones that  kept him from his coin.

_ Stop looking at her. _

He was watching her again, in the rear-view mirror, he did it without realising anymore.  Did she know? Did she notice the glances out of the corner of his eye? The music from the radio interrupted his thoughts, he wrinkled his nose at the voice, softly wailing about love and loss.

“Hippy bullshit, what do they know about love, real love,” he said, twisting at the dial to find something more pleasing to his ears.

“What are you babbling about now,” Laura asked him.

“Mortals, you don’t know anything about love, real love ,” he sniffed and rubbed at his face with a dirty and  calloused hand.

“And you know, do you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,  aye . The kind of love that makes you hurt inside, like  you’ve got a knife stuck deep in your gut. And when you  fuck ,  it’s like  you’re in a vacuum,  it’s just you and them and you  can’t breathe. You’d die for them and they for you.”

“I did die...”

“No, you were killed while you were  fucking about with his friend. You couldn’t wait for Shadow because you didn’t love him, maybe you thought you did, but I’m telling you that you didn’t.”

Sweeney looked up into the mirror, she was staring back at him, one blue lip curled upwards, and her eyes narrowed in disgust at his words. There was no warning from her as she launched a foot at the back the driver’s seat, tearing through the fabric and hitting him right in the middle of his back, the force rattled his internal organs. The air was ripped from his lungs and he gasped, his mouth flapping like he was a fish out of water. A mortal man would have been paralysed, he counted himself lucky that she  hadn’t used all the strength at her disposal. The car swerved in the road as he regained control over his breathing, he looked up at the mirror again, she was smiling with satisfaction.

“Are you trying to kill us?”

“You don’t know me ; you can’t say those things about me.”

“I know you better than you think, Laura Moon. You can’t scare people into not telling you the truth, the sooner you accept that, the happier you’ll be.”

“ And what about your truth? You want everyone to think  you’re some washed  up, crazy  alcoholic.”

“That is precisely what I am, I accept that  truth,” she was staring at him like she could see through his  lie, he gave her his best  fake grin. Thousands of years of practice had made it indistinguishable from  a real smile, he preferred it that way.

_ Even you  _ _ don’t _ _ know which smile is  _ _ real anymore _ _. _

He smacked at the side of his head to dislodge his thoughts,  sending it back to the little part of his mind that stored all the things he  didn’t want to think about it , t he place where his denial  ruled. He sent a lot of things there  these days, he sent Laura Moon there too. She sat in his mind, caged up, begging to be  freed.

__ _ That's _ _ right, lock it up like you do with everything else. Pretend you only have one reason to be here with her now. _

She was quiet now, pouting in the back seat,  gazing out of the window .  He left her to her thoughts, even though it meant being left with his, those torturous flutters of memory that he  couldn’t piece together in the right order anymore. She was part of that puzzle ; he just  couldn’t figure out where to put her. So he left the  fractured  pieces buzzing around in his skull like angry bees.

He reached into his pocket, one hand on the wheel while the other rummaged for his hip  flask , h is fingers found the cool metal that held the whiskey. He took a deep  swig ,  making an overemphasized noise  of  satisfaction as the liquid warmed his  throat, the more he drank, the less he had to remember.

“Turn here,” she told him.

He did as he was asked, taking another look at her in the mirror as he turned the wheel of the car.

_ One more look  _ _ won’t _ _ hurt. _


End file.
